No question that we’re going to miss the game nights. Because several of us in the group either have medical issues that make Covid-19 (Coronavirus) very dangerous to us and some of our relatives we’re caretakers for, we were watching this really closely even before things really ramped up. We hoped to have one more week in person, and even then we kind of felt nervous about it.
But yeah, folks, pandemic. It’s a scary and strange world we live in and our house is under solid stay at home. Groceries bought, work moved remote, and minimal contact with well, anyone or anything. And in a lot of ways, it stinks. But we love game days. We love being in contact with our wonderful followers, fans, friends, Patrons (Madclaw, Tridentdragonite, The Observing), subscribers, and even those wonderful lurkers we’re always cheering on.
So like so many of the rest of y’all – we’re going digital.
For the foreseeable future, you can throw the board game schedule out the window.
Regrettably, the fact we can’t all get together also means some of the surprises we promised might be delayed…more or less indefinitely. But we’re going to make the most of it and find ways to keep interacting with our awesome community because you guys put the “fun” in self-quar-an-fun-tine.” Maybe I’ll even put on a khaki shirt and outdoor hat, pick up an Australian accent, and start stalking the Braden in his natural habitat while recording my adventures.
Admittedly I may not be handling being cooped up as well as I thought.
So, if any of you play on Board Game Arena (https://boardgamearena.com) take a look for Assorted Meeples on there, because that is one of the places where a lot of the online fun is moving.
Right now we’re playing a lot of games with Patrons. So if you want in on the crazy action with The Corrupt Overlord, The Business, St. Christopher the Returned, Old Man Callahan, and Pheeellllll, then (WARNING: Blatant Plug :D) why not support us on Patreon? They get goodies like the old pre-shows, the private Discord (that place is rocking), and playing crazy online games with the Meeples.
Take a look at just one example of the three times we’ve already been online in group having a blast on this Twitch Video of game night. Awesome.
We will also be figuring out some new goodies to send the Patrons to make up for the lake of pre-show. We’re all winging it here at this point, but we’re committed to making sure the people who support us ALWAYS feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal by a long shot.
You know, between Meme and GIF wars with them on Discord. Because, you know, priorities.
We are all going on with content creation as usual – YouTube videos are still going out the door 3 times a week, and the changes to our Twitch streaming schedule are still set to roll out on Saturday, March 28th. Some of the more exciting changes to the Twitch schedule include the Corrupt Overlord Shane picking up two streaming times (After FINALLY picking up that hard drive he needed. And the new gaming laptop because his old one was….well the company stopped making laptops in English in 2015. So yeah…way to keep up with the times, Shane).
I’m sure his choice of games will be….uniquely Shane.
In addition to Board Game Arena and some other group games that were recommended to us, we’re also pursuing different games on Steam and other platforms One example of this was a fun impromptu group farm of Stardew Valley on Sunday.
One of the benefits of current technology is that we’ve never had so many options for finding amazing games, connecting with our followers, and bringing you more great content – and you can bet we’re going to be taking full advantage of these options.
There’s a learning curve here for sure, and the world’s a weird and scary place right now. We’re adapting the best we can, trying to bring as much laughter, joy, and normalcy as possible.
We also completely understand that there’s a lot to worry about right now, and there’s a lot of legitimate frustration. For many of us, Thursday nights were something that we looked forward to without fail every single week.
Some of us already worked from home and really needed that face to face social time. We were surprised how quickly many of our friends chimed in with just how much fun they had interacting with us, we picked up a lot of new subscriptions and follows from strangers who apparently liked our style (or something?), and it’s been a delight of a ride for the past five months.
Then all this happened. Some things just can’t be helped.
But we do our best to control what we can and to adjust and adapt. Considering how rapidly the “we can’t meet anymore” realization rushed up on us, it’s been way smoother than we would have expected. You know, despite the technical difficulties and laughable complications that we have called “professionalism” since the beginning. It’s a little comforting that some things haven’t changed.
So Thursday night game nights will continue! They will just be digital for the foreseeable future. If the first week is any indication, they’re a lot of fun and high energy. We’re not in danger of going stale anytime soon.
We’ve talked about opening up some to friends, followers, and subscribers, and we’ll play that by ear as well. There will still be video game streams (St. Christopher’s “Boot Heel of Equality” is just a winner!), group farming on Stardew Valley, and some randomness.
We’ll have some Thursday game days that are open play and others where some of us Meeples face off for an online version of Stone Age or Lords of Waterdeep.
In other words, we’ll keep producing content. We’ll do our best to have fun and bring light to our part of the world. We’ll do our best to keep the amazing little community we feel blessed to be a part of growing. And Shane will find a way to start making it weird 🙂
So don’t forget this week: Starting at 6:30 P.M. CST – Assorted Meeples will be on Twitch.TV.
Hope to see you there!
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Proud to embrace the locally created moniker of “Corrupt Overlord” from one of the all time great Lords of Waterdeep runs, Shane is one member of the Assorted Meeples crew and will be hard at work creating awesome content for the website. He is a long-time player of board games, one time semi-professional poker player, and tends to run to the quirky or RPG side of things when it comes to playing video games. He loves tabletop roleplaying systems like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Werewolf, Fate, and others, and not only has been a player but has run games as DM for years. You can find his other work in publications like Level Skip or Hobby Lark.